


You and Me Against the World

by literaryoblivion



Series: Freck's Inktober [11]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Werewolves, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 20:05:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16271387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryoblivion/pseuds/literaryoblivion
Summary: After everything goes to shit and there's zombies now, Derek and Stiles find each other and stick together, checking in on walkie talkie when they're not. It's a good plan, that is until Derek doesn't check in.





	You and Me Against the World

“Not even if we were the last two people on Earth,” he had said, and to be honest, it was in a fit of rage and Derek had provoked him, and he never thought he’d have to be eating his words.

But, boy, was he eating them now, and they did not taste like delicious chicken.

Oh… chicken. Stiles could really go for some chicken right now.

Or anything right now. He could chew on a piece of gum and pretend it was that special Willy Wonka kind and he can shout out the flavors like the one chick who turned into a blue balloon. And the fact he is fantasizing about fictional chewing gum is sign enough that he is delusional and needs food and water and sleep.

“Derek, please tell me you found something because I don’t think I can make it much longer,” he says into the walkie talkie in his hand.

He looks out the windshield of the parked RV he’s in at the deserted and desolate town in front of him. He thinks they’re somewhere outside of Reno, so the desert-ness makes sense. All the wrecked and abandoned cars along the street though… not so much.

After a few more moments with the continued static sound of the walkie talkie, Stiles sits up a little straighter, concern coloring his tone.

“Derek?” he asks again. “Come on, dude, I know you have broody silent type on lock down, but now’s not the time to demonstrate it.”

More static.

“I swear to god, Derek, if you’re not answering on purpose, I’m shooting you in the foot. Waste of ammo be damned.”

Static.

“Shit,” Stiles says to himself. He looks behind him for the shotgun, grabs it and stuffs several bullets in his pockets. He slings the gun over his shoulder and grabs the bat sitting on the passenger seat and stuffs the keys and the walkie talkie in his pocket before climbing out of the RV. He shuts the door as quietly as he can and makes his way to the grocery store across the street that Derek had gone into for some food and supplies that might be useful.

He runs as quickly and quietly as he can. Loud noises attract the living and the undead, so if he can be stealthy, the better. It’s why he brought the bat, not just the gun. He gets to the front of the store, the doors pushed ajar already. He thinks about trying the walkie talkie again, but decides against it and forges ahead.

Several overhead lights are out, only a few still flickering with power. It makes the broken and near barren shelves of the store even more creepy. Well, that and the rotting, near headless corpses that are strewn about. 

Stiles doesn’t even want to go in further, but Derek isn’t answering and Derek  _ never _ not answers. Never.

Ever since they found each other again, after Beacon Hills was evacuated and everyone got separated or quarantined… or dead, Derek and Stiles never went more than fifteen or twenty minutes without checking in.

They were all each other had left in this world, hadn’t even found an actual living person for miles and near months (though they’d come across plenty of zombies since then). They might have found each other annoying and frustrating and loud and grumpy at one point in time, but that was before. Before everything went to shit and it wasn’t something magical or werewolf related and didn’t just affect Beacon Hills but the whole damn world.

It’s been a good thirty minutes, pushing close to forty since the last time Stiles heard Derek on the walkie, and he can feel the panic creep up his spine as he makes his way toward the back of the grocery store. 

When he reaches the swinging doors to the back room, he sees Derek’s bag, a small stack of cans stacked next to it. He looks into the windows of the doors and sees the walkie on the floor just inside.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Stiles whispers. Something must have happened. Derek wouldn’t just leave the food and the walkie here.

Slowly, with his bat gripped tight in his hands, he uses it to push the doors open and shuffles in. He pauses just inside, straining his ears to see if he can hear anything, a struggle, grunting, growling. But other than the buzzing of the light fixtures that have shorted out, it’s silent.

The backroom of this store is huge, giant shelves reaching up to the ceiling, pallets and ripped boxes scattered around, most of the food is rotting, flies already swarming around what was once fresh fruit. As he gets further, there’s a sliver of light coming from what must be a back office.

He inches towards it, bat at the ready, but before he can get out of there, a shadow falls into the light and staggers. Stiles almost screams, but he keeps it inside. The shadow is shaped a lot like a dog, but it’s clearly hurt, limping down the hall. Blue eyes flash at Stiles before the dog--wolf--takes a few more steps and slowly changes back into a human. It’s painfully slow, both for Stiles to watch, but it looks like Derek is hurting too.

“Sti--” he whispers out before falling out on the ground, several feet away from Stiles.

“Fuck, Derek!” he hisses, rushing over to Derek’s side. He knows he needs to help Derek, but Derek must have been fighting something, or several somethings, to have taken his wolf form and come out looking like he’d gone 10 rounds with a meat cleaver. He can’t risk focusing on Derek if whatever it was is still lurking.

Luckily there’s only one hallway and the office, and after a peak in the office, he can confirm Derek took care of whatever the hell it was that beat him up. He can’t even tell if it’s human, werewolf, or zombie, that’s how much Derek had torn it up.

He runs back to Derek, who’s still laying on the floor, eyes closed. He’s not healing very fast these days, running on very little sleep, food, and water. His body is better than Stiles sure, but it’s not the same as it was before.

“Come on, Derek. We gotta get out of here,” Stiles says, setting his bat down and doing his best to shake Derek and pull him up from the ground. It takes a few tries to pull on his arms, but Derek finally is coherent enough to sit up.

“There’s,” Derek starts, then coughs. “Office... water.”

“You want me to go in there where you left the shreds of that thing?!”

“Water,” Derek says again, eyes fluttering open briefly before shutting again.

Stiles sighs and gets up again, leaving Derek to slump over slightly. He goes back to the office, and sure enough there’s a water cooler in the corner that miraculously still has water in it. He looks around for some kind of container and spots an upturned bowl on the desk. It’s probably gross, but it’s better than cupping his hands. He takes it and does it best to wipe it out with his hand, then puts it under the water cooler spigot and fills it up.

They should probably take the rest of it, but he’ll deal with that later. Now he has to help Derek. He carefully carries the bowl full of water to Derek, trying not to slosh too much of it over the sides as he approaches. He sets it down, trying to get Derek to sit up a little better before picking the bowl up with one hand and steadying Derek with a hand on his back as he puts the bowl to his lips.

Derek drinks, a great deal of the water running down the corners of his mouth. But he does drink some of it and it seems to help. He opens his eyes for longer and after several sips, he takes the bowl from Stiles with his own hands and gulps down more.

Once the bowl is empty, Derek seems more revived. He takes several breathes and then says, “Thank you.”

Stiles sighs, a small grin playing on his lips. “You’re welcome. Come on, we need to get out of here.”

Derek nods and gestures for Stiles to take the bowl and go get his own water. Stiles shakes his head. “I’ll find something to put the rest of it in to take with us. Need something bigger than a bowl.”

“There’s,” Derek starts, then takes a breath, “still some tupperware on the shelves.”

“That’ll work,” Stiles says as he stands up. “Can you stand?”

“Yeah. Just…” He holds his hand up to Stiles, and Stiles takes it and gets a good grip on his arm too with his other hand and pulls Derek up. Derek staggers into him a little, but when he’s steady on his own feet, Stiles loosens his grip.

“I’ll go get the tupperware and the water, you get your bag and the cans. I’ll help you carry stuff too,” Stiles says.

With a nod, they set out on their tasks, Stiles jogging to the aisle of tupperware and grabs as many as he can and stripping them of their cardboard boxes as he goes back to the office to fill them up with water.

By the time he’s gotten all of the water, not as much as he thought there was, in sealed containers, Derek’s bag is filled with all the canned items he found, what was left of the batteries, and a couple first aid kits. He hands Stiles a reusable grocery bag to put the water in, and after Derek makes sure the outside coast is clear, they jog back to the RV across the street.

~

They’re parked for the night at an out of the way state park that’s not near any civilization if there were any civilization to be near. They’ve found it’s easier, less likely they run into unfriendlies. Derek’s mostly recovered now, patched up in the places where the gashes were deep and they’re not healing as fast. He had started a small fire and was heating up a few cans of beans for he and Stiles.

They eat in silence, sounds of bugs, who are able to survive anything apparently, surrounding them, a few hoots of an owl here and there as the moon rises above them and it’s dark.

Eventually, Stiles breaks the silence by punching Derek in the arm, not the one that’s still wounded, he’s not that mean.

“Ow! What the hell was that for?!”

“You can’t do that to me ever again, you hear me? Never again. We’re going together in every possible situation and we’re checking in every 10 minutes now if we’re separated.”

Derek almost rolls his eyes except for the deadly serious look Stiles is giving him. “Stiles, I’m okay. I’m here.”

“Yeah, for now! What if you’re not so lucky next time? What if there’s a whole pack of them and you’re overpowered? What then Derek?!”

“I wouldn’t let that happen,” Derek says calmly, scooting closer to Stiles. He can tell Stiles is spinning, that he’s working himself up into a panic attack.

“You can’t possibly promise that, Derek. I can’t--” Stiles voice breaks, and Derek can tell his eyes are shiny, not just from the light of the fire. “I can’t lose you, Derek. I can’t. You’re… you’re all I have left, and I refuse to let you go. You can’t go.”

The tears are flowing freely now, and Derek bundles Stiles up in his arms and holds him while he lets Stiles cry his fear and frustration out.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers against Stiles’s hair. “I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere without you, okay? I promise.”

Stiles sniffs and nods, pressing in closer to Derek. It’s not a comfortable position, and parts of Derek still ache, but he ignores it.

“Let’s go to sleep,” Derek says after a while; it’s starting to get cold, the fire barely even there. He can feel Stiles nod against his chest and slowly push himself away to sit up. Derek takes care of kicking sand on the remaining embers of the fire while Stiles gathers their utensils. 

They climb back into the RV and strip down to boxers and slip under the covers of the small bed in the back. Derek pulls Stiles in against his chest, and Stiles goes willingly, letting Derek make him the little spoon and puts himself between Stiles and the world.

When he’s positive Stiles is asleep, Derek sighs and kisses the back of Stiles’s neck and whispers into his skin, “I’m yours and by your side always. I promise.” He squeezes Stiles a little, letting his hand rest on Stiles’s chest, feeling his steady heart beat against his palm, hearing the rhythm in his ears as he falls asleep promising himself and his heart to this boy forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [my tumblr](http://literaryoblivion.tumblr.com) or [my twitter](http://twitter.com/lit_oblivion).


End file.
